Beyond Reason: The True Story of a Shocking Double Murder

By Ken Englade

The Woman: She was a beautiful, gifted descendant of Lady Astor. But Elizabeth Haysom was also a spoiled, willful daughter of privilege. The Lover: He was the brilliant young son of a German diplomat. But his love for Elizabeth would draw Jens Soering into a web of madness and murder. The Murder: When Elizabeth's parents were found savagely butchered in their elegant Virginia country home, she and Jens fled to Europe-igniting an international manhunt that spanned three continents. The Trial: The sensational courtroom drama that followed painted a twisted portrait of two golden youths consumed by hatred and perverse fantasies. Elizabeth's startling testimony-and intimations of acts and desires that went beyond mere murder-would reveal a tangled web of dark secrets and deadly obsession.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781635768312

Book preview

BEYOND REASONBEYOND REASON

First Published by St. Martin’s Press

Copyright © 1990, 2023 by Ken Englade

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email [e-mail]

Diversion Books

A division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

www.diversionbooks.com

First Diversion Books edition, April 2023

eBook ISBN: 9781635768312

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Photos

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Afterword

Author’s Note

The story related here is complicated. It involves a number of people and events in widely separated locations, from central Virginia to Europe—from Lynchburg to London and from Boonsboro to Bonn.

There were many who helped compile this material, patient, considerate people who often went considerably out of their way to be of assistance. Among those who offered generously of their time and knowledge, I would particularly like to thank Jim Updike, Ricky Gardner, Chuck Reid, Ken Beever, Geoffrey Brown, Colin Nicholls, Carroll Baker, Debbie Kirkland, Jennifer Thomas, Carl Wells, Hugh Jones, and Jack Rice and his crew.

There were also those who gave freely of their time and information but who asked, for one reason or another, to remain anonymous. I promised not to name them, but that does not mean I do not appreciate what they have done. They know who they are, and I hope they know how valuable their assistance was. To all of them, I am infinitely grateful.

There are also those who helped me communicate what I had learned. To them, I am particularly indebted because they helped me control my rambling, made sure I kept things in perspective, maintained consistency, and excised the irrelevant. Among them are my wife, Sara, and David Snell, Betsy Graham, and Mitchell Shields, and Peter MacPherson—good friends all. I thank them profusely.

In a story such as this there are always some gaps and loose ends; only in fiction is everything wrapped up neatly at the end. To help keep the flow of the tale I have here and there constructed a few bridges: If this happened and that was the result, then such-and-such must have happened in between. Such instances were relatively rare. In places I have reconstructed conversations, at which, obviously, I was not present. The reader will understand that I am not asserting that those exact words were spoken, but I have endeavored to capture the thrust of events that did occur. The basic outline of this story is well documented and as factual as I could make it. If there are errors, they occurred because of my misinterpretations. For these, I apologize in advance.

A number of people were drawn into the events related here through no fault of their own. They were involved only because they happened to be in a certain place at a certain time. I have tried to protect their names and reputations by assigning them pseudonyms. The reader will recognize them because the first time they are mentioned their names are printed in italics. Otherwise, the identifications are as they appear in documents relating to the case. There are no fictional or composite characters.

1

Sweat rolled down Derek Haysom’s face. It streamed down his forehead, collected in his eyebrows, and dripped from the end of his nose. Every few minutes he stopped digging and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. It did not do much good. Seconds later, the perspiration was flowing as freely as before.

A few miles away, in Lynchburg, the weather bureau’s protected thermometer was pushing eighty-four. But it was hotter than that in the shadeless garden where Derek and his wife, Nancy, had been working since early that morning. It was much too hot, Derek thought, for March 30. Without turning his head, he asked his wife, How are you holding up?

As far as I’m concerned, we can call it a day, Nancy replied wearily.

That’s a good idea, Derek agreed, slowly straightening his stiffening back. I think it’s sundowner time.

Normally, it does not get particularly warm in the Blue Ridge Mountain country of central Virginia until much later in the year. But 1985 was an exception; the sun had been beating down relentlessly all week. It was particularly hard on Derek, who was accustomed to cooler climes.

It’s going to be just as miserable tomorrow as it was today, he grumbled as he gathered his tools and began stacking them at the side of the house. Sometimes he was as fussy as an old maid, which is about what one might expect from a man whose favorite hobby, after gardening and card games, was designing circuit boards for ham radios. But that doesn’t matter, he panted. Palm Sunday or no, we’re going to have to be out early again.

Nancy nodded silently in agreement, too exhausted to reply. Turning toward the house, she listlessly peeled off her thick cotton gloves and threw them on the ground.

As he gathered the equipment, Derek tried to make light of his fatigue, joking about his seventy-two-year-old bones and how it was getting harder to bounce back than it used to be. Advancing age was not something he accepted readily. To help postpone it, he kept in shape with tennis and sporadic jogs along Holcomb Rock Road, the narrow, twisting thoroughfare that ran in front of their house. But a long day of hard labor in a hot sun was enough to drain even the barrel-chested Derek.

The Haysoms had moved to Boonsboro three years before, in 1982, after Derek retired as director of a venture capital organization in Nova Scotia. An engineer by education and training, Derek had shifted into management at midcareer and worked in executive jobs on three continents. Boonsboro beckoned because it was a suburb of Lynchburg, where Nancy had grown up. They lived in relative tranquility in a modest two-story house that Nancy had named Loose Chippings, after a dwelling in an obscure British novel. In the novel, the house was called that because it served as a sort of way station for eccentrics. Nancy found that particularly applicable to their situation.

Naming houses was one of Nancy’s little quirks. Another was collecting small boulders, which she used for building walls around the gardens they always planted whenever they moved to a new residence. Over the twenty-five years she and Derek had been married, wherever they lived, Nancy always built rock walls around their gardens. Now that she was into middle age, the children nagged her about it. Wrestling with outsized rocks, they argued, was not a hobby particularly conducive to her continued good health. To appease them, she promised that the wall at Loose Chippings would be her last.

I’m for a shower, she said, running her hand through a mop of auburn hair that was just beginning to show streaks of gray.

You go ahead, Derek muttered. I’ll finish up here and then I’ll be right behind you.

God, it was beastly out today, Nancy said, looking cool and comfortable in a royal blue dashiki she had chosen for a quiet evening at home. Her speech was clipped and sprinkled with Briticisms, which was not surprising considering she had spent the last thirty-six years, since she was seventeen, living among British expatriates in southern Africa and Canada. Despite her Virginia roots, there was hardly a hint of a southern drawl.

Summer will be here before we know it, agreed Derek. At times like this I wish we were back in Nova Scotia.

While Nancy’s accent was affected, Derek’s was legitimate. Most Americans hearing him talk, in fact, thought he was British. In reality, he was a South African of British descent, a native of Natal Province on the East Coast. During the years he worked and studied in the United Kingdom before returning to southern Africa after World War II, he polished his speech to the point where no one but an Englishman would notice his colonial roots.

Nancy sighed. Finishing her drink, she extended her empty glass. Would you, please? she asked Derek.

Derek took it and strode to the liquor cabinet. The same? he asked, already pouring a large shot of gin over the melting cubes.

She did not answer. Given a choice, Nancy almost always drank gin: Boodles when it was available, Gordon’s when it was not. It was a sign of his exhaustion that Derek did not offer his usual lecture on the evils of her beverage of choice. Almost invariably he chided her about her love for gin. The juniper extract used to flavor it is a perfect poison, he would say. It produces the same feelings of aggression as amphetamines. Tonight he said nothing. Silently, he added a splash of soda and a slice of lemon to her glass and put it to the side while he refilled his own. Derek’s preference was scotch, which he consumed in the British fashion: straight up—no ice, no water, no soda.

Scooping up the two glasses, he recrossed the room, handing the gin to Nancy and taking a seat across from her. As much out of habit as because of the heat, Derek had closed all the curtains so that they were sitting in the glow of a single lamp. The weak light threw Derek’s craggy face into strong shadow, accentuating his nose and jutting chin, making him look positively fierce. The same light made Nancy appear soft and cuddly. At fifty-three she was still a good-looking woman, perky rather than pretty, petite with attractive, even features, a charming upturned nose, flashing brown eyes, and a fine, full figure. Plump some might say. But whenever she and Derek attended social functions, and that was often, Nancy never failed to draw stares from the men in the group. This raised conflicting emotions in Derek—pride mixed with jealousy—and usually sent him off on a tirade about how she undoubtedly would remarry quickly once he was out of the way. She laughed off those exhibitions, but as a woman with an almost insatiable need for attention and affection, she was secretly pleased with her lingering voluptuousness. Tonight, she had not bothered with makeup after her shower, and the lamplight made her appear unnaturally pale. Around her neck was a double stranded gold choker, her only concession to formality for the evening. It glowed in the darkness.

One more, please, dear, she said. A little something while I’m fixing dinner.

While Derek mixed her another drink, Nancy put a pot of rice on to boil and attacked a mound of ground beef, shaping the meat into thick patties, which she slid into the oven.

Nancy rinsed the plates and stacked them in the dishwasher, carefully culling the silverware because she always washed that by hand. In the dining room, Derek slumped peacefully at the table, enjoying the after-dinner quiet. It had been a long day, and he was falling victim to too much sun, too much scotch, and too much dinner. He was just about to nod off when there was a loud rapping at the door. He jerked upright. Bloody hell, he cursed, blinking and squinting at his watch. It was just past eight o’clock.

Are you expecting anyone? Nancy called from the kitchen.

No, Derek grumbled, stretching like an old dog forced to surrender his favorite napping spot.

Nancy poked her head through the serving door cut into the wall between the kitchen and dining room. I wonder who it might be?

I’ll soon find out, replied Derek. Carefully placing his palms flat on the sturdy table, he used his powerful arms and shoulders to push himself upright. As he moved his chair back, it scraped across the slate floor like a fingernail being dragged down a chalkboard.

I’m coming, he yelled, setting off unsteadily across the room. After his shower Derek had changed into a pair of baggy work pants and a short-sleeved shirt, which was marked by dark half-circles under the arms. On his feet was a pair of new Indian-style moccasins, the kind in which the sole wraps around the foot to be joined to the upper by thick laces. As he walked, the leather made soft scuffling sounds on the uneven stone, the kind of soft whisking noise the barber used to make when he stropped his straight razor. The scotch had thrown Derek’s internal compass askew, and he walked lopsidedly to the door.

Nancy left the kitchen and crossed the dining room, silently watching her husband’s erratic progress toward the door. She was more curious than anxious. Not many people arrived unannounced on a Saturday night, and she was eager to see who it was. Unconsciously, she brought her left hand to her breast and gathered the dashiki more tightly about her. Underneath the robe she wore only a beige bra and matching panties, not exactly the attire she would have preferred for welcoming guests.

Derek paused at the door, fumbling with the light switches. The visitor thumped the knocker again. "All right," Derek growled. Don’t be so bloody impatient. With his right hand, he flipped the switch closest to him, turning on a set of floodlights that bathed the top half of the driveway in harsh light. Clearly visible was the Haysoms’ creaky ten-year-old tan van, which Nancy had joshingly christened the Bronze Belle. To its right was their 1963 BMW sedan. Immediately in front of the door, side-by-side with the Belle, was a shiny new silver-blue subcompact that Derek had never seen before.

Reaching up, Derek flipped a second switch. It controlled a single bulb over the doorway, and when it was lit, it threw heavy shadows on whomever happened to be standing on the stoop. Sometimes, depending on how close the caller was to the door, visual identification was tricky. But a nearly full moon eliminated that problem. Although he did not know the car, Derek immediately recognized the caller.

Oh! he said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

I— the visitor started, but he stopped when Nancy’s head appeared over Derek’s shoulder, a puzzled look on her face.

Is Elizabeth with you? Nancy asked, peering into the darkness to see if she could see her daughter walking up the path.

No, the visitor replied. I came alone. He was wearing jeans and, despite the warm night, a gray Members Only windbreaker. It effectively hid the layer of baby fat that still clung to his five-foot-eight frame. He wore thick-lensed spectacles and offered a tentative smile.

What’s this all about? Derek demanded in the gruff manner he used with those he did not particularly like. What do you want?

Is anything the matter? Nancy interjected. Is Elizabeth all right?

She’s fine, the visitor said, shuffling nervously from foot to foot, bouncing in his white running shoes like a marathoner waiting for the starting gun. I came because I wanted to talk to you and your husband.

Derek frowned. Talk to us? What about? Why isn’t Lizzie with you? His tone was more than mildly belligerent.

It’s all right, Derek, Nancy said soothingly. Despite her gin-induced fog she felt the visitor’s tension. It was palpable, as obvious as the darkness and the heat. I’m sure there’s a good reason, she whispered, laying a calming hand on her husband’s forearm.

Turning to the visitor, she flashed an airline hostess smile. Please come in, she said, trying to project a warmth she did not feel. We were just finishing dinner. Come in, and I’ll fix you a plate.

2

Annie Massie screeched to a halt in front of the modest two-story house that she knew almost as well as her own.

Thank God you’re here, Jane Riggs wailed, wringing her blue-veined hands.

I came as quickly as I could, Annie said breathlessly, striding briskly across the greening lawn to join Jane and her two companions, Marilyn Baker and Constance Johanson.

This is so unlike Derek, Jane sobbed. "So unlike him. I just know something dreadful has happened."

Every week, as regularly as a church service, Derek Haysom played bridge with the three women. Unless he was away on a business trip or he and Nancy were off on a transatlantic jaunt, he never failed to miss a bridge date, certainly not when he was the host.

We pounded on the door, Jane said, nodding at the big brass knocker that glistened flatly in the weak, late-afternoon sunlight. It didn’t do any good.

When no one answered, we thought they had lost track of time and might still be working in the garden, interjected Constance. But we checked, and they weren’t there either.

That’s when we got really worried, added Jane. So we went down to Mitchell’s Store and called you.

I’m glad you did, Annie replied apprehensively. Elizabeth called just before you did, she added cautiously, anxious not to upset the three elderly women any more than they already were. But she could not smother her own strong premonitions of tragedy. She said she hasn’t been able to reach them all week, and she wanted me to come out and check on them.

They all knew it was a rarity for Derek and Nancy not to have some contact every few days with their twenty-year-old daughter, a student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a ninety-minute drive away. She was the focus of their lives.

Annie looked around quickly. The bunged-up van was parked in its customary spot under the trees in the center of the circular drive. A few feet farther along was Derek’s BMW. It, too, was in its normal place, backed carefully off the pavement so its nose was pointing down the steep slope. He always backed it into its parking niche: When it was time to go somewhere the impatient Derek didn’t like to waste time maneuvering his vehicle.

We didn’t know what else to do, said Jane, her voice cracking. We didn’t want to have to call you, but we didn’t know whom else to call.

Don’t worry, Annie said soothingly. You did the right thing.

Digging into her purse, Annie produced a dull brass key. Nancy gave this to me a long time ago, she explained. When they’re out of town, I come over to check the house, water the plants, and make sure everything’s okay. Fingering it as reverently as a Catholic would a rosary, Annie paused, considering what to do. Nancy was her dearest and closest friend. They had been like sisters since they were children. Over the years she had come to be fond of Derek as well. She liked them both too much, was too respectful of their privacy, to go barging into their home unless she was asked to do so. But this had the earmarks of an emergency. She knew no two people more reliable than Derek and Nancy. If they made an appointment and then failed to keep it, there was a reason. In the pit of her stomach, she was sure the reason would not be pleasant.

Slowly, fearfully, she approached the door. Glancing over her shoulder, Annie read the anxiety on the three women’s faces and knew that the same emotion must be painted on hers as well. Gritting her teeth, she turned the key in the lock and started when the tumblers clicked noisily into place. Holding her breath, she twisted the handle and swung the door open a crack. Hello, she yelled more loudly than she intended. Startled by her own voice, she jumped as though a hairy spider had just crawled across her foot. When there was no reply, she tried again. Nancy? she called more softly. Derek? Again there was no response. She turned and looked at the three women. No help there. Their faces were as blank as the Virginia sky.

Should I go in? she asked them.

Constance shrugged. Jane, the more visibly frightened of the three, bobbed her head nervously. Something’s very wrong, she said in a quavering voice. I feel it in my bones.

Annie threw back her shoulders and took a deep breath. Reaching out, she gave the door a gentle shove. Silently, it swung open another eight inches. Immediately, she wished she had not touched it. In the gloom, she saw a sight she knew would haunt her dreams for years to come. Just inside the door, barely two strides away, Derek was sprawled on the floor surrounded by a huge dark stain which she knew intuitively was dried blood.

Oh my God, Annie gasped, covering her mouth.

What is it? Jane asked shrilly. What is it?

It’s Derek, Annie croaked, swallowing an urge to retch. He’s right there on the floor. He’s covered with blood.

Let me see, Marilyn said, pushing forward. Maybe we can help.

No! Annie replied, quickly closing the door. There’s nothing we can do now. There’s no way he could be alive. Not with that much blood. Take my word for it, she said, blocking the entrance. You don’t want to see.

What about Nancy? Constance asked, smothering her rising panic. Where is she? Did you see her?

No, Annie said, struggling to control her own horror.

"I didn’t see her. I don’t want to see her."

Maybe she got away, Jane suggested.

Then we would have heard from her, Annie replied. She would have called the police.

Maybe she’s lying in there hurt, Constance added.

Annie considered that. No, she said slowly. I don’t think so.

Oh my God, oh my God, Jane mumbled, breaking into tears.

Annie stared at her. As a physician’s wife she knew how contagious hysteria was. If she did nothing, she would very quickly have three blubbering women on her hands.

We can’t go inside, Annie said firmly. I’ve read enough books to know we shouldn’t go into a house in which a crime has been committed. From the quick look I got, I could tell Derek has been dead a long time. Going into the house isn’t going to help him or Nancy. What we need to do is call the police.

With a decisive twist, she relocked the door, removed the key, and returned it to her purse. Then she bundled the three panic-stricken women into her car. She drove down the drive and turned right in the direction of the main highway and Mitchell’s Store, the same roadside market where Jane had used the telephone to call her. They were there in three minutes.

While the women waited in the car, Annie punched at the telephone’s metal keyboard, willing her hand to stop shaking long enough for her to push the right buttons. When Dr. William McK. Massie came on the line Annie explained to him in a halting voice what she had seen. He told her to stay calm; he would call the police.

Although Massie initially called Lynchburg officials, he discovered that the Haysoms’ home was not in the city but in Bedford County, a distinction Massie did not appreciate until he was told by the LPD dispatcher that he. had to contact the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office. The city of Bedford, where the sheriff’s office is headquartered, is about thirty miles west of Lynchburg, almost exactly halfway between that city and Roanoke. But the Bedford County line runs right up to the city limits of both places. Boonsboro is only a mile and a half outside the Lynchburg city limits and barely over the county line.

As Roanoke and Lynchburg expanded, Bedford County Sheriff C. H. Wells and his troopers were faced with more work. To help facilitate the reporting of crime on the county’s borders, Wells maintained local numbers in Lynchburg, Roanoke, and Big Island, which is on the northern border with Amherst County. Dispatchers in all the counties were scrupulous about determining who had jurisdiction.

When Massie got the Bedford dispatcher on the line, he succinctly explained his reason for calling.

Tell your wife to go back to the house, the dispatcher said. I’ll have someone there as soon as I can.

Within minutes Deputy Joe Stanley roared up the driveway. It was 4:15.

Tell me what you saw, Stanley ordered Annie.

As soon as she finished, Stanley took the key from her trembling hand, unlocked the door, and looked inside.

Aw, Jesus, he said. The scene was exactly as Annie had described it: Derek was stretched out grotesquely on the floor, and he had obviously been dead for several days.

As Annie had done, Stanley backed out of the house, closed, and locked the door. Following department procedure, he radioed Bedford and told them to stand by for a telephone call, mindful that ears other than those of Bedford deputies often monitored the law enforcement frequencies. From a pay phone he confirmed what Annie had said, adding that the second person believed to be in the house was not visible from the living room and that he needed another deputy immediately.

By the time Stanley got back to the house, Deputy George Thomas was there and more help was on the way. The dispatcher had put out a call for all available investigators to report to the house on Holcomb Rock Road. The LPD and sheriff’s offices in neighboring counties also were alerted.

Working as a team, Stanley and Thomas went back inside.

Barely glancing at Derek, they moved to the right, across the living room and into the master bedroom. Despite bloody tracks across the floor, there was no other body there.

Retracing their path, they crossed the living room again, stepped around Derek’s supine form, and went into the dining room. It looked as though someone had poured a bucket of brown paint on the slate floor, then splattered some of it around the room before swishing the remainder about with a mop. But Nancy was nowhere to be seen.

God, would you look at that, Stanley mumbled. You ever seen anything like that before?

Not in my worst nightmares, Thomas stuttered.

For a considerable time they stood there, horror-stricken, staring at the evidence of more carnage than either of them could have imagined was possible.

After what seemed a long time, Stanley shook his head and found his voice. Where’s the woman? he said. We still haven’t found the woman.

Oh, hell, that’s right, Thomas said. Where in hell could she be?

Without answering, Stanley nodded slowly at the open door across the room, the passage that led to the kitchen.

Slowly, they crossed the blood-splashed dining room.

You think she’s there? Thomas asked.

Has to be, Stanley replied.

Cautiously, afraid of what they were going to find, they peeked into the room. Curled on the linoleum floor, in the center of a large brown stain, was Nancy Haysom. Except for the dried blood, she looked as though she may have just stretched out for a nap. She was resting on her left side, her hands tucked under her body and her legs bent slightly at the knee. Her hair fanned out gently from her face. On her feet was a pair of tan walking shoes so new that the manufacturer’s logo was still clearly visible on the soles. Bending over the body, Stanley could see part of a gold necklace. Most of it, however, disappeared into a horrendous slash across her throat, a wound so deep and so large she was all but decapitated. The deputy didn’t have to feel for a pulse; he knew that Nancy was far beyond help.

Retreating through the dining and living rooms, Stanley and Thomas went out the front door and carefully closed it behind them. Annie Massie and the three bridge players were waiting for them, tense and white-faced.

Did you find Nancy? Annie asked anxiously.

Yeah, Stanley said, breathing deeply. I’m afraid she’s dead, too.

Sergeant Geoffrey Brown, LPD’s youthful lab technician, had gone home that afternoon with grand plans to celebrate the early spring. He was in the backyard, grilling steaks on the barbecue, when the telephone rang. A few minutes later he came back and told his wife he was going to have to leave.

Not again!

A double murder, he explained quickly, over in Boonsboro.

But that’s Bedford County, she pointed out.

I know, he said, but they’re activating the Regional Homicide Squad. That means me.

What time will you be back? she asked in resignation.

I don’t know, he said, snatching his car keys off the kitchen table, but don’t wait up.

When he got to the house, Brown’s first impression was that he was wading into a sea of gore. Looking around quickly, he estimated that 90 percent of the floor surface in the living room, dining room, and kitchen was smeared with blood. His second impression, once he began examining the bodies, was how terribly they had been butchered.

Moving first to Derek because his body was the closest, Brown squatted and examined the scene. Derek, he noted, was lying on his back, turned slightly to his left, with his head resting against the wooden fireplace jamb. His right hand was palm down with the right index finger extended, as though he were pointing to an object on the bloodstained floor. His left hand was palm up, exposing a deep gash that ran horizontally, a cruelly ironic, cavernous lifeline.

There was no question he had died brutally. Someone with a large, very sharp knife had slashed and stabbed Derek Haysom unmercifully. There were two large, roughly parallel horizontal gashes on the left side of Derek’s face. One began near his cheekbone below the comer of his eye and angled upward and across, cutting through his ear. The other ran from the comer of his prominent chin straight across to the back of his neck. There was another slash on his right cheek that began on his chin and went upward to just below the ear. Brown figured these cuts were made by the killer in efforts to slice Derek’s throat. Obviously they were preliminary attempts because the killer soon found his mark. A huge, gaping wound ran right around Derek’s neck.

A glance at Derek’s hands demonstrated how desperately he had fought for his life, actually grabbing the blade in attempts to wrest the knife away from the assailant. He had six cuts on his hands, including the one that traversed his entire left palm. One of his knuckles was abraded, Brown noticed, indicating that Derek may have slugged the killer at least once.

An autopsy report would later confirm that the killer’s slash had severed every major blood-carrying organ in Derek’s neck. If he were alive when the wound was administered, he would have bled to death in a matter of seconds. Whether he was indeed alive at that time no one knew, because that was not the only potentially fatal injury inflicted upon the retired executive. He also was stabbed through the heart.

Besides the cuts on his cheeks, jaw, and hands, there were eleven slash wounds on Derek’s chest and fourteen on his back. All told, Derek was cut, sliced, or stabbed some three dozen times.

Nancy was not sliced as terribly as her husband, but there was no question that the attacker meant to kill her. In addition to the grotesque slash across her throat, there were two stab wounds to her torso which could have killed her, one to her heart and one to her side, which penetrated the peritoneal cavity. She would not have died as quickly from those wounds as she would from the slit throat, which virtually guaranteed that she had dropped where she was cut. Besides those wounds, Nancy had a cut on her jaw, a superficial wound on her left breast, and an incised wound on her left elbow, apparently inflicted when she raised her arm to try to ward off a knife thrust.

By the time Brown had finished his cursory examinations, the first wave of what soon seemed like an army of police had begun to arrive. A deputy was posted at the door to keep out everyone who did not absolutely need to be inside until the lab technicians had a chance to collect their evidence.

Since the murder occurred in Bedford County, Sheriff C. H. Wells would be the man responsible for the investigation. Standing in the blood-soaked dining room he quickly surveyed the scene. Three chairs were pushed back from the table, which still held a dirty plate, a bowl, a wine glass, and a neatly folded paper napkin soaked in blood. On one end of the table was a stack of books, as though someone had been using it as a desk. On the tasteful gray upholstery covering the seat of one of the chairs was a large bloody palm print looking for all the world like the cover illustration on a recent mystery novel entitled Thinner.

Almost immediately, Wells came to two conclusions. The first was that three people had been seated at the table. Since two of them were dead, that meant that either the third party, the guest, probably was the killer or there was another body somewhere that had not been found. His second conclusion was that the attack took place in the dining room. Nancy apparently was gravely injured early on and staggered into the kitchen to die. But the killer and Derek fought around the dining room and living room until Derek was overcome by his injuries. Both bodies apparently were left where they fell.

When no third body was found, Wells’s first observation was substantiated: Nancy and Derek knew their killer at least well enough to invite him into the house and serve him a meal. From the first, Wells was thinking him. A her, he reasoned, would not be strong enough to fight with Derek as viciously as the killer had done, and a her was not as likely to slice up the bodies as badly as they had been. Nor would a her be likely to perform what looked to be a grisly coup de grâce. The chances were good that the Haysoms’ throats were slit either after they were dead or when they were very close to dying. It would take an unusual woman to be able to do that.

Throughout the night law enforcement officers toiled at the crime scene. While Brown and other technicians

Reviews for Beyond Reason

[ague_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some of this book is fascinating. It got boring towards the end and repetitious. The author actually comes across as somewhat biased before the book is done. There is an obstacle with the book, as because of copyright law, the author was not allowed to quote from the personal letters and diaries of the criminals themselves.